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Have you ever seen ArenaNet employees in WvW ?


Custodio.6134

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Just as the title says, i wonder if ArenaNet employees ever play WvW. Especially the last few balance patches and discussions on possible balancing-changes let me think about if ArenaNet, especially the balancing-team actually knows how the state of WvW really is.To clarify my question a bit: playing WvW does NOT mean, that you join WvW once per week for 2 hours, with "playing WvW" i mean, being active a lot of time (maybe not as much as the "veterans" that play every day for at least 4-5 hours, but i think about every ~2 days for at least 3 hours) and staying in both, a public zerg and roaming, and also with interacting with the respective community of the server.For myself, since release (and i started playing WvW even before my first character reached lvl 80) i have NEVER seen a player with ArenaNet-Tag in WvW. If it is really the case, that ANet, especially the balancing-team actively plays WvW, i guess i have never seen one, or they didn´t ever play on our Server. If NOT, well, then at least i know how these (sometimes ridiculous) balancing ideas/implemented changes are produced...

I don´t want to start a huge discussion about balancing-aspects here, but encourage ArenaNet employees, especially the balancing-team that is responsible for WvW, to focus their own type of playing to WvW from time to time and over a longer period (e.g. 2 full matchups, so they expierience at least 1 re-linking) to really witness the current state of the game mode and how their implemented changes did impact the whole game. Also, this would require playing on not only 1 server, but to switch servers that are in different languages, and especially different timezones, as this heavily impacts the flow of battle, especially at primetime. I just want to point this out, because opinions here in the forums are always heavily subjective and don´t always reflect a neutral view. Exactly this point is a huge factor, that could impact the balance and state of the game mode in a negative way as you cannot rely on opinions of players to 100% because of the subjective perception of each player, which can vary a lot on personal expieriences. Also, humans tend to remember negative expieriences a lot more, than things that are actually good. For example: you will not care as much about your own healing being too high, as your enemies damage being too low. Vice versa, if your enemy deals a huge amount of damage, you will notice this, and start to feel a lack of your own sustain (even if it is not the case). Another point is the fact, that WvW-related balancing-changes to classes/skills/traits still seem to be connected (at least in a particular way) to PvP and PvE. This is (in my opinion) one of the reasons why ANet struggles to balance WvW in a proper way. WvW-balance MUST be split from PvP and PvE entirely. They are in no way related to each other and the differences in style of play and priority on what classes/skills/traits are important or not are HUGE.

This is one thing i would really like to know

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A few hours a week is not truly playing ... u have to get deeper in touch with the whole thing to be able to see the problems. But when i hear them talking about balancing things i hardly doubt they are even close to... sorry. And even if they were... talking about things don't change them ^^

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this is exactly the feeling i got over time, and is the reason for this post. You need to play WvW on a daily basis, in different aspects of WvW (Zerging and Roaming) and a reasonable amount of time to get a realistic insight on the state of WvW. And, i really hope there will be more focus on the WvW-balance and PvE/PvP will no longer have any impact on WvW. Just as i said, the whole system how WvW works is too different from every other game-mode and must completely be separated and no longer be influenced by those.

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The last time I saw a small group of them they were building catas on the west side of Bluebriar :3 .

They are streaming WvW every thursday on different servers though, so you can easily just check the stream to see if they are on a server near you. When they do that they mostly seem to follow pickups however.

Ed. As far as recent development goes there are at least positive trends. They hired Cal who has a player background and they split WvW balancing internally from PvE character design to the competetive team (so PvP/WvW balance will be one team). What we've seen so far from their actions is mostly promising and I like how Cal explains and conducts himself in the recent threads. Overall, not necessarily a time to be disappointed when it comes to balancing but rather some cautious optimism.

However, if you want to be critical you can talk about how long and arduously it took them to react and and enact these changes, how much behind the mode still is on larger updates (like alliances; which alone is well behind [essentially being a 2017 fix to a 2015 problem]) and how cautious optimism still needs to transform into good end results to become more than just that. In closing though, at least there are some things being done right now and not just not being done or being done wrong. There is no pleasing everybody of course, but I do see most people who are a bit deeper involved with the game being interested in and on the side of the choices made. If we see complaints about recent changes they are either from people who play one class, one subset of content or very superficially; or we see complaints regarding balance where there may be some negative issues in a positive greater whole.

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The Anet tag is a work thing. If you work at McDonald's and stop by for a burger on your own time, you're unlikely to have your uniform on. There's a few who play, or used to. One I knew even did GvG's.But does that mean they're in a decision making position? No. And that's the important part. The guy in charge of balance through the game's heyday was... Painful to watch in WvW, to put it mildly.

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Yes, I have! :smiley:

This video is from 3 years ago. SoS vs YB - outside of Fire Keep.(I'm not recording it, but I was there. I'm on SoS, and I'm the one that says - "GET HIS A$S" at the very beginning... hahaha :lol: )

Our Anet Dev buddy is Jona who regularly played on SoS and fought along side us that night as well! He and his Anet counterpart on YB agreed to a duel in front of the two server blobs!!! :grin: I'll let you enjoy the short video of how that went down if you've never seen it. :wink:

And...I've seen Jona recently (within the last few weeks or so ) and other Anet players here and there too!

(I especially like what happens after the duel! "the good ol' days!" :+1: )

ENJOY! :grin:

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Back when WvW had a team, you would see them all the time, most were on a few servers, and every time we were matched with them, I would see their tag. However, they don't HAVE to run the tag, they can turn off the rep and look like anyone else. You would often only see them with the tag on while zerging, reason being is when they would roam with the tag on people would hunt them so hard, some people would even pay gold to other players to kill them. It was all fun and games, but if you are playing for enjoyment, or to better understand the game you work on, having 15-20 people all over the map looking JUST for you, calling you out when you are spotted on the map.....Would get old fast. It also would not let you experience the game in the way everyone else does.

Now, if the new balance WvW team does, and how much they play, well, thats something only they can answer. Also, as someone else said, just because you see a anet tag does not mean they have any say in WvW, they may have NOTHING to do with the skills or WvW team.

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@"Krypto.2069" said:Yes, I have! :smiley:

This video is from 3 years ago. SoS vs YB - outside of Fire Keep.(I'm not recording it, but I was there. I'm on SoS, and I'm the one that says - "GET HIS A$S" at the very beginning... hahaha :lol: )

Our Anet Dev buddy is Jona who regularly played on SoS and fought along side us that night as well! He and his Anet counterpart on YB agreed to a duel in front of the two server blobs!!! :grin: I'll let you enjoy the short video of how that went down if you've never seen it. :wink:

And...I've seen Jona recently (within the last few weeks or so ) and other Anet players here and there too!

(I especially like what happens after the duel! "the good ol' days!" :+1: )

ENJOY! :grin:

WaS there on YB side. There were 2 anet regulars on YB then. I am no longer on YB so don’t know if they play any longer

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@"Custodio.6134" said:Just as the title says, i wonder if ArenaNet employees ever play WvW. Especially the last few balance patches and discussions on possible balancing-changes let me think about if ArenaNet, especially the balancing-team actually knows how the state of WvW really is.To clarify my question a bit: playing WvW does NOT mean, that you join WvW once per week for 2 hours, with "playing WvW" i mean, being active a lot of time (maybe not as much as the "veterans" that play every day for at least 4-5 hours, but i think about every ~2 days for at least 3 hours) and staying in both, a public zerg and roaming, and also with interacting with the respective community of the server.For myself, since release (and i started playing WvW even before my first character reached lvl 80) i have NEVER seen a player with ArenaNet-Tag in WvW. If it is really the case, that ANet, especially the balancing-team actively plays WvW, i guess i have never seen one, or they didn´t ever play on our Server. If NOT, well, then at least i know how these (sometimes ridiculous) balancing ideas/implemented changes are produced...

I don´t want to start a huge discussion about balancing-aspects here, but encourage ArenaNet employees, especially the balancing-team that is responsible for WvW, to focus their own type of playing to WvW from time to time and over a longer period (e.g. 2 full matchups, so they expierience at least 1 re-linking) to really witness the current state of the game mode and how their implemented changes did impact the whole game. Also, this would require playing on not only 1 server, but to switch servers that are in different languages, and especially different timezones, as this heavily impacts the flow of battle, especially at primetime. I just want to point this out, because opinions here in the forums are always heavily subjective and don´t always reflect a neutral view. Exactly this point is a huge factor, that could impact the balance and state of the game mode in a negative way as you cannot rely on opinions of players to 100% because of the subjective perception of each player, which can vary a lot on personal expieriences. Also, humans tend to remember negative expieriences a lot more, than things that are actually good. For example: you will not care as much about your own healing being too high, as your enemies damage being too low. Vice versa, if your enemy deals a huge amount of damage, you will notice this, and start to feel a lack of your own sustain (even if it is not the case). Another point is the fact, that WvW-related balancing-changes to classes/skills/traits still seem to be connected (at least in a particular way) to PvP and PvE. This is (in my opinion) one of the reasons why ANet struggles to balance WvW in a proper way. WvW-balance MUST be split from PvP and PvE entirely. They are in no way related to each other and the differences in style of play and priority on what classes/skills/traits are important or not are HUGE.

This is one thing i would really like to know

They play with a tag lots. Ive seen them more times than I could count.The reason they don't wear their guild icon more is because it paints a target on them and creates an experience that shouldn't be considered relevant for making things like balance decisions on.I know it's a cool meme to say "Devs don't play their own game" and proclaim yourself more knowledgeable. But reality is this is how they make their living. Odds are they've spent a lot more time than you have in the game mode. Wisely they don't often advertise their position and play without the Guild Tag.You not seeing the tag is a good thing.They will make their design choices with direct knowledge and relevant data, not anecdotes.

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@"mindcircus.1506" said:I know it's a cool meme to say "Devs don't play their own game" and proclaim yourself more knowledgeable. But reality is this is how they make their living. Odds are they've spent a lot more time than you have in the game mode.

I really don't know how you could actually think that if you have been playing this game mode for any significant amount of time.

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Occasionally on the enemy server. I enjoy harassing them on my ranger when I see them.That said, in seven years I've only seen a dev on my own server once. (I didn't interact with them, they were part of a zerg.) Apparently that was their home server, but you could've fooled the playerbase -- almost nobody knew them.That said, I see them more frequently in pvp and got my achievement for killing a dev 4~5 years ago. (Have an old screenshot on my home computer as I didn't even know the Anet tag was a thing until I saw one in pvp.)

~ Kovu

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@ArthurDent.9538 said:Yeah, their location was called out in team chat at which point basically the whole server came over to hunt them down and spawn camp them. Can't really blame them for not repping the anet guild in wvw.

A valid point. I do see a lot more devs in pve and I don't pve all that often, it makes sense that they'd be willing to rep the attention grabbing guild tag in a gamemode where they can't subsequently be targeted by everyone in a three mile radius.

~ Kovu

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@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:Back when WvW had a team, you would see them all the time, most were on a few servers, and every time we were matched with them, I would see their tag. However, they don't HAVE to run the tag, they can turn off the rep and look like anyone else. You would often only see them with the tag on while zerging, reason being is when they would roam with the tag on people would hunt them so hard, some people would even pay gold to other players to kill them. It was all fun and games, but if you are playing for enjoyment, or to better understand the game you work on, having 15-20 people all over the map looking JUST for you, calling you out when you are spotted on the map.....Would get old fast. It also would not let you experience the game in the way everyone else does.

Now, if the new balance WvW team does, and how much they play, well, thats something only they can answer. Also, as someone else said, just because you see a anet tag does not mean they have any say in WvW, they may have NOTHING to do with the skills or WvW team.

to be fair there is an achieve so, its nothing personal :p

and if they feeling being hunted, then - welcome to how we feel in unfair populated scenarios. i.e. jq/hod vs tc vs nsp/et. where we defend with 10 against queues ^^ (backcap onli, can't really defend)

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